Sotheby’s Offers Nelson and Happy Rockefeller’s Collection

Another Rockefeller collection is about to come to market offering a treasure trove of decorative arts, furniture, and paintings.

The collection of Nelson and Happy Rockefeller, to be auctioned by Sotheby’s, will not provide the same spectacle as the sale of more than 1,500 works by Nelson’s brother, David, and his wife, Peggy, in six live auctions and several online sales by Christie’s in May that realized $832.6 million for 12 charities.

But in three sales of more than 450 items, Sotheby’s will reveal Nelson’s progressive, eclectic tastes, from traditional, classic works, including Chinese export porcelain, to modern and contemporary art from Fernand Léger to Andy Warhol. Nelson was a former U.S. vice president and a governor of New York for 14 years.

A Modernist’s Vision, a November sale featuring 26 works of 20th century design and impressionist and modern art from the couple’s Fifth Avenue apartment in New York, opens the doors to the interior of a home originally designed by the avant-garde Paris designer Jean-Michel Frank in 1938.

Frank had a prominent position in the world of architecture and design at the time, working with some of the most prominent artists and patrons in France, says Jodi Pollack, Sotheby’s worldwide head of 20th century design.

“It’s no surprise Nelson Rockefeller sought him out to realize his aesthetic vision of the interiors,” Pollack says. “It shows how progressive he was at the time.”

In the last decade, there’s been growing interest by designers and collectors to mix different styles and genres, an approach lauded today as creative. “But there were pioneer collectors much earlier in the century adopting the same principle,” she adds.

Nelson, who at one time was also the director of the Museum of Modern Art, co-founded by his mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, “wasn’t moved by convention,” Pollack says. “He was very much forming the collection around his own intellectual and aesthetic vision.”

Highlights from the November sale include works designed expressly for the apartment’s interior by Alberto Giacometti and Christian Bérard. Among them are a pair of “incredibly expressive” Giacometti console tables, Pollack says. The consoles each carry an estimate between $700,000 to $1 million.

Also from Giacometti is a ‘Grecque’ Table Lamp, estimated between $150,000 to $200,000, and a Pair of Andirons, estimated between $200,000 and $300,00.

The first auction also will include a ceramic sculpture by Pablo Picasso, Le Condor, 1948, estimated to sell for between $500,000 to $700,000, a multi-textural collage on sandpaper by Joan Miro titled Composition, 1933, estimated to sell for between $600,000 and $800,000, and a 1967 portrait of Nelson by Andy Warhol, estimated to sell for between $1 million and $1.5 million.

Total proceeds for the auction are expected to exceed $6.1 million, Sotheby’s says.

On Dec. 4, Sotheby’s will include the sale of a selection of Happy’s jewelry, including a custom collection created by Van Cleef & Arpels, in its Magnificent Jewels auction.

The final auction, to be held in January, will include the largest grouping from the couple’s collection, about 400 lots, “focused on the classical tradition of objects that Nelson Rockefeller also pursued with great zeal and passion,” Pollack says.

The January sale items will include “exceptional Chinese Export porcelain, Chinese and European ceramics and works of art, silver, fine art, Americana, books and manuscripts, prints, and Japanese works of art,” Sotheby’s said in a news release.

The total collection is estimated to realize in excess of $8 million, Sotheby’s says.

The first sale, A Modernist Vision: Property from the Collection of Nelson & Happy Rockefeller, will be held at 9 a.m. on Nov. 13 at Sotheby’s, 334 York Ave., New York.

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